The present invention relates generally to data communications. More particularly, the present invention relates to alternative network address and port translation.
Network address translation (NAT) is a technique commonly used to allow multiple network devices to access a network using a single internet protocol (IP) address. For example, conventional routers for small offices and home offices allow multiple computers to access the Internet using a single external IP address by translating between the IP addresses of the computers and the external IP address by monitoring connection parameters such as the destination IP addresses of frames of data sent by the computers. One variation of NAT is network address port translation (NATP), which also employs port mapping.
Both NAT and NATP as conventionally implemented suffer from a significant disadvantage. Because both techniques are generally implemented by a central processing unit (CPU), switching involving NAT or NATP cannot occur at wire speed.